To celebrate their 100th birthday, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines organised for over 14,000 school kids in Gauteng to break a world record for most number of paper planes flown at a single time.
The kids launched the 14,456 paper planes into the air at 15 schools around the province at the exact same time. These planes contained messages from the students dedicated to their future selves.
But don’t worry, these planes aren’t going to contribute to our ever-growing pollution issue. KLM collected all of them and will recycle them to build a sustainable ‘Forest of the Future’ at the Mother Of Peace orphanage.
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‘We are very excited to have broken this world record as part of our local KLM100 activities,’ Wouter Vermeulen, General Manager: Southern African Region at Air France-KLM said in a statement.
‘Although it is a world record attempt and that is a fun activity to do, the thought process behind it; using the recycled paper to make the paper planes, having the children’s wishes on the paper and then using that as compost for the gardens; is quite inspired really.’
The forest will be created in October and will be planted over 2,000 square meters of land and aims to provide a consistent sustainable source of food for the orphanage and surrounding communities. KLM has committed to taking care of the forest for three years before handing it over to the community.
Here are some other world records that have been broken by South Africans:
- Largest gathering of dog’s with bandanas
- Most bungee jumps in one hour
- Most people performing full body burns
- Most people blowing vuvuzelas at the same time
- Tallest stack of doughnuts
- Longest line of sandwiches
- Farthest beer bottle cap throw
- Fastest trek to the North Pole
- Most surfers riding one wave
- Longest sausage roll
Image source: KLM
